Five seconds feels a bit longer when aiming your pee, but pulling the stick away too quickly or not leaving it in your urine stream long enough can affect the validity of the result. If you choose to dip, use a clean, dry container stable enough to hold the test and urine without tipping.
That's especially important with nondigital line tests. Waiting too long can sometimes cause a faint, colorless evaporation line to appear when the urine dries. While lines without color aren't a sign of pregnancy, they can be confusing, Watkins says.
When possible, try to wait until it's been three hours since your last pee before you take the test. You could also take two pregnancy tests to confirm you get the same result.
Can a pregnancy test come up negative if I didn't pee enough? A false negative on a home pregnancy test is possible, but extremely unlikely. As long as your urine got on the test's absorbent strip, it should be accurate. You can always take another test if you're worried you might have missed.
If your test did not provide a dropper but said that you could use a collection cup, dip the absorbent end of the pregnancy test into the cup of pee and hold in place for 5 to 10 seconds (or whatever time it says in the directions).
Should I dip my home pregnancy test in urine, or pee on it? Most tests allow you to either place the absorbent tip in your urine stream for (usually) five seconds or dip the tip in a collected urine sample for five to 20 seconds. Accuracy is not dependent on the method as long as you follow the instructions.
Evaporation lines are colorless streaks, not faint lines. They typically appear if a person waits for longer than the suggested time to read the test result. An evaporation line can also appear if the test gets wet.
Invalid Pregnancy Test Result
If only the test line (T) shows up, or no lines develop, the test result is invalid, which usually means the test is faulty and did not detect the hormone. This could mean the absorbent tip wasn't saturated with enough urine, or the test is expired or damaged.
Remove the plastic cap to expose the absorbent window. Point the absorbent tip (with 5 small openings) directly into the urine stream. Take the sample for at least 7-10 seconds, to ensure that an adequate sample is collected by the testing device.
Your hCG levels will slowly start to fall naturally, but a pregnancy test, may detect residual hCG levels and give a positive result, even though you're no longer pregnant. If you continue to see a positive result on pregnancy tests and are concerned, see your doctor.
Remember this--you can generally count on a positive result to be accurate, but you can't be totally sure about a negative result until you get your period. To avoid any confusion caused by evaporation lines, read your test after three minutes and throw a negative result away once 10 minutes have passed.
“The false negative rate, if done appropriately, is less than 1%.” If someone waits until the appropriate point in their menstrual cycle and ensures that their urine is concentrated enough at the time of testing, then it's highly unlikely that an at-home pregnancy test will provide incorrect results, he explains.
For the most part, pregnancy tests don't get darker as they go along. “These tests are designed to be read usually within 10 minutes of you doing the test,” says Dr. Demosthenes.
An evaporation line (or evap line) typically appears like a faded streak, while a faint positive test result looks like a lighter blue or pink line, depending on the test dye color.
An evaporation line will be a grayish white mark that appears after ten minutes. The best way to know if you are pregnant is to test again tomorrow.
With HCG test strips, you'll want to pee in a cup and dip the test strip in the cup to get an accurate result. If you try to pee directly on the strip, the results may be blurry or invalid.
If you can't hand your urine sample in within 1 hour, you should put the container in a sealed plastic bag then store it in the fridge at around 4C. Do not keep it for longer than 24 hours.
An evaporation line is also often thinner than the control line. In the image above, you can see that the horizontal line is one thickness, while the vertical evaporation line is much thinner and of uneven thickness.
It's common to see evaporation lines appear during a pregnancy test, but they don't always. Make sure you check your results within the reaction time if you're using a home pregnancy test.
What does a faint line look like? Each pregnancy test is different, with some brands using a red dye and others, like Clearblue, a blue dye. For a red dye test, a faint line will look light pink, whereas a blue dye test will produce a light blue line.
Just be sure to wait a few days—taking a second test in the same sitting won't give you a different result.
HCG is at its highest level in the morning when urine is fresh and not diluted by the liquid you drink during the day. If you test in the afternoon, your urine may not have enough HCG to detect.